Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris by David King is a gruesome story of a man who took advantage of people who wanted or needed to get out of Paris during World War Two. Here is what PW said about the book:
In 1944, when Parisian police entered a mansion littered with dismembered, rotting bodies, they thought of the Gestapo, but it turned out to be a purely French affair. Historian King (Vienna 1914) has mined the resulting global media circus (not only in France; Time magazine covered it) and extensive official records to tell a gripping story. The villain was a textbook psychopath, Dr. Marcel Petiot: a charming but heartless liar. Despite spending 20 years in and out of police courts, he won elections to local offices in the provinces only to be dismissed for petty crimes. Moving to Paris, he sold narcotics to addicts under the guise of treatment. During the German occupation, he offered to smuggle people out of France, murdering them when they arrived for the journey carrying their valuables. He went to the guillotine proclaiming himself (despite overwhelming evidence) a resistance hero, who killed only Nazis and collaborators. This fascinating, often painful account combines a police procedural with a vivid historical portrait of culture and law enforcement in Nazi-occupied France.
One of the interesting characters in this book is the policeman who investigated the serial murders, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu. He was charged at the end of the war as so many innocent people were with collaboration but after a short time was totally exonerated. He is believed to be one of the originals for Georges Simenon's Maigret.
2011 No 203